Suicide attacks kill 7 in Iraq
Two suicide car bombers have killed seven people in attacks in northern Iraq, amid continuing violence in the region.
In the first attack, three Iraqi national guards and two civilians were killed in an attack on a checkpoint south of Kirkuk.
In another attack, a suicide car bomber detonated his bomb beside an Iraqi Army patrol in Samarra, killing two soldiers.
Meanwhile in the capital Baghdad, a gunman has shot dead an American soldier, then escaped into a crowd of Iraqis.
More than 1,500 American soldiers have died in Iraq in the two years since the US invasion.